General practitioners and clinical guidelines: a survey of knowledge, use and beliefs

Clinical practice guidelines are being developed for a variety of reasons. To date, there has been little investigation of the perspectives of those who are recommended to use them.

The survey reported here set out to investigate how familiar general practitioners are with a range of published guidelines, to assess whether they have used them, and to describe their attitudes to the guidelines and the methods of implementing them.

A postal questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 559 general practitioners in the North and Yorkshire region in March 1995. Questions were organized around the topics of: knowledge; use; practice change; beliefs; pressure felt to use the guidelines; and methods of implementation. Basic classificatory data on gender; year of qualification; partnership and fundholding status were also collected.

Replies were received from 300 doctors (54%). Knowledge and use of the three selected guidelines varied, but was generally towards the 'high' end of the scale. Doctors showed a high degree of homogeneity in their attitudes to guidelines, which were generally positive. Only single-handed practitioners varied from this pattern of responses. Most of the pressure to use the guidelines was felt to come from the Department of Health, and the least pressure from patients. Doctors felt that the methods of implementation that involved them in educational events and discussion with colleagues were most likely to have an impact on them.

General practitioners are receptive to guideline initiatives, and their views are in line with existing or proposed implementation strategies. More investigation of the concept of 'use' is needed.